Evil and omnipotence mackie essay

For example, a person who chooses to put in hard work and sacrifices some fun during college life, his or her return in the end will be much greater.

I should ask this: It cannot be evil because its goal is Evil and omnipotence mackie essay providing huge benefits in the future. I think, however, that a more telling criticism can be made by way of the traditional problem of evil.

The fallacy here is akin to some forms of the " naturalistic fallacy " in ethics, where some think, for example, that " good" is just what contributes to evolutionary progress, and that evolutionary progress is itself good.

I would think not, and the reason I say this is because J. Then we could consistently say that God all the time has omnipotence 1but if so no beings at any time have powers to act independently of God.

God was not, then, faced with a choice between making innocent automata and making beings who, in acting freely, would sometimes go wrong: I Evil and omnipotence mackie essay that in all cases the fallacy has the general form suggested above: This is even true for those who are victims of evil.

But why, we may ask, should God refrain from controlling evil wills? The present solution of the problem of evil, then, can be maintained only in the form that God has made men so free that he cannot control their wills. But, finally, even if we concede that this is an ontological principle, it will provide a solution for the problem of evil only if one is prepared to say, "Evil exists, but only just enough evil to serve as the counterpart of good".

There is still doubt of the correctness of the metaphysical principle that a quality must have a real opposite: The solutions that Mackie attacked only focused on one side of the equation, namely, these solutions tried to explain the problem of evil by looking at worldly life rather than also considering the afterlife.

Written by Nazmus Shakib Khandaker with edits. Mackie argues that if an omnipotent and morally perfect god exists, why then is there so much evil in this world? In fact, theists often seize the opportunity to accuse those who stress the problem of evil of taking a low, materialistic view of good and evil, equating these with pleasure and pain, and of ignoring the more spiritual goods which can arise in the struggle against evils.

He explains that the existence of evil is a direct contradiction of God being all good. And it is a logical problem, the problem of clarifying and reconciling a number of beliefs: It may be replied that good and evil are necessary counterparts in the same way as any quality and its logical opposite: While this account is different from our original one, it might well be held to be an improvement on it, to give a more accurate description of the way in which good is opposed to evil, and to be consistent with the essential theist position.

This leads us to what I call the Paradox of Omnipotence: But unless evil is merely the privation of good, they are not logical opposites, and some farther argument would be needed to show that they are counterparts in the same way as genuine [] logical opposites. The converse is also true.

Instead, we have a modified, a more complex pattern. But then if freedom is randomness, how can it be a characteristic of will?

This view of God as limited by causal laws also conflicts with the view that causal laws are themselves made by God, which is more widely held than the corresponding view about the laws of logic. Mackie University of Sydney The traditional arguments for the existence of God have been fairly thoroughly criticised by philosophers.

From these it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible. Many have agreed with Pope that disorder is harmony not understood, and that partial evil is universal good.

Fallacious Solutions Besides these half-bearted solutions, which explicitly reject but implicitly assert one of the constituent propositions, there are definitely fallacious solutions which explicitly maintain all the constituent propositions, but implicitly reject at least one of them in the course of the argument that explains away the problem of evil.

It would be a causal law that you cannot have a certain end without a certain means, so that if God has to introduce evil as a means to good, he must be subject to at least some causal laws.

The problem does not arise only for theists, but I shall discuss it in the form in which it presents itself for ordinary theism. The second of these formulations is relevant to the suggestions that we have already met, that an omnipotent God creates the rules of logic or causal laws, and is then bound by them.

Perhaps the suggestion is that good and evil are related in much the same way as great and small. The belief is that each and every one is given a unique test and that each person must go through it so they may learn humanity.

I propose to examine some of these so-called solutions, and to exhibit their fallacies in detail. For those who still hold true to the three ideas, Mackie shows that the reasoning behind their beliefs is flawed in that it indirectly shows that one of the three facets are false. If you are prepared to say that God is not wholly good, or not quite omnipotent, or that evil does not exist, or that good is not opposed to the kind of evil that exists, or that there are limits to what an omnipotent thing can do, then the problem of evil will not arise for you.

And, still more, how can it be the most important good? This paradox can be solved in the following way.

Exactly how it emerges does not matter:Free Essay: J.L. Mackie's "Evil and Omnipotence" The philosopher J.L. Mackie wrote a very convincing piece on the problem of evil called “Evil and.

J.L. Mackie's Evil and Omnipotence Essay Words | 7 Pages J.L. Mackie's "Evil and Omnipotence" The philosopher J.L. Mackie wrote a very convincing piece on the problem of evil called “Evil and Omnipotence,” in which he attempts to show that one of the following premises must be false in order for them to be consistent with each other.

Mackie, in his essay Evil and Omnipotence, tries to prove that believing in a mighty and all good god is irrational. His primary point of focus is the existence of evil, which, he claims, goes against the existence of an all good god.

In the essay, "Evil and Omnipotence" John L. Mackie states the problem of evil, as a contradiction between the propositions "God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists" (p).

This contradiction is made apparent as Mackie explains that if any two of the propositions are held to be /5(4). Evil and Omnipotence (J. L. Mackie) 2 (Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, Epistle i, line ) It is hard to deny the existence of evil, despite what Pope says (and however elegantly he says it.).

EVIL AND OMNIPOTENCE By J. L. Mackie University of Sydney. The traditional arguments for the existence of God have been fairly thoroughly criticised by philosophers.